Transfer

"Arc! Get up you piece of shit! Its waking hours!"

A guard wearing an Atlas standard uniform burst into the cramped cell, he looked around spotting Arc still asleep on the lower messy bunk so he walked over and kicked the blond-haired man wearing a white jumpsuit right in the chest.

The blond groaned in pain and turned over trying to escape the wrath of the guard whose eyes narrowed. "What do you want Mr.G" The blond inquired in a monotone voice as he looked at the guard with dim blue eyes that seemed to have all of the light stripped from them.

"Did you not hear me?! I said move it Arc!" The guard shouted as he twisted his baton revealing a high-voltage taser.

The blond looked at him confused and didn't make any moves to indicate that he was getting up. "What are you talking about? Wh--AHHHH!!!"

The guard didn't let him finish and struck him in the stomach with the taser sending volts of electricity through the blonde's body with a cruel smirk on his face.

"You don't get to ask the questions here scum! You just do as your told!" He pulls back and then starts raining down blows onto the blond whose body was singed in some places and charred black in others.

"Uhh, Luke?" Another guard peeks his head around the corner and calls out to the one wailing on the blonde.

"What is it? Can't you see I'm busy here?" He snapped as he took a short break to glare at his coworker who simply gave him a blank gaze.

"We gotta hurry up here, so get Arc, and let's get moving."

"What, the hell do you think I'm doing here?"

"Beating on some random inmate."

"Oi, you blind? This isn't just some random convict this is THE Jaune Arc and he!" The guard slams his baton down on the blond shocking him once again. "Deserves!" Another blow and the blond's eyes start bleeding tears. "This!"

The guard standing in the doorway sighs.

"I hate to break it to you but that's not Arc." He suddenly reveals and the guard who was attacking froze in his tracks and slowly turned to look at the other one.

"What?"

It was simple but effective enough to express his current state.

"That." The guard in the doorway points at the seizing blond "Isn't Arc, his name is James Wock and he was to be released today."

The guard gulps.

"Y-your joking right? R-right Kyle?" He stutters out terrified at the notion that he may have just assaulted a freeman without just cause.

"...no."

And then the guard who was standing in the doorway leaves as Wock foams at the mouth, eyes rolling back into his skull. The trembling guard looks down at Wock only to see a cold corpse where the man once was and he swallows the large lump in his throat.

"Shit."

Meanwhile, Kyle, the guard who left unlocks another cell and calmly opens it revealing another blue-eyed blond but this one was younger, more robust, and the lifeless eyes of the other one were nowhere to be seen on this young man.

In fact, if he wasn't wearing an oceanic blue jumpsuit Kyle may have thought this young man had a bright future ahead of him. Instead, kyle's eyes scan over the marked suit, that future is about to be locked away forever.

The man was sitting on his bed, hands clasped together, and stood up sharply when he heard the door open.

"A g-guard? W-why are you here?"

THE Jaune Arc, the real Jaune Arc stutters out surprised that a guard would come into his room without a scowl on their face.

Kyle doesn't give him a second glance. "Let's go Arc." He motions for him to leave the room and the blond does so without question, a slight limp in his step.

Kyle takes note of said limp and a very big scar running down Arc's back from the tip of his right shoulder down to his hip covered by the jumpsuit, and then he starts moving along saying nothing.

Kyle leads the man down the hallway passing by tens of other cells filled with criminals, some who have this distant look in their eyes, and others who look absolutely ecstatic about something.

As the two walk down the halls passing by empty cell after empty cell with the occasional guard escorting a prisoner out more often than not Arc looks at Kyle.

"Something on your mind?" Kyle suddenly asks not turning to face him, surprising Jaune.

"I--yeah. I was just w-wondering. Where are we going?"

"I can't tell you that." Kyle responds sharply.

"O-oh. T-then can you tell me your name?"

Kyle raises an eyebrow at that.

"Why?"

"W-well I figure since you haven't hit me yet maybe we could be friends or at least acquaintances you know? Mom always said friends are just strangers you haven't met yet." Jaune says cheerfully with a longing expression on his face.

Kyle doesn't answer and Jaune just looks at the floor downtrodden seeing that reaction as a No. Guess it was too much to hope for someone to not hate him, but this one didn't show any visible distaste or outright attack him so that's a step up at least.

As the two walk down the steps getting on the ground floor where more and more cells are wide open and there are more guards taking inmates out to somewhere Kyle pipes up.

"All you need to know is that you're being transferred."

This gets another surprised look from Jaune.

"Transferred? Where?"

Kyle pauses mid-step and stares at Jaune.

Jaune scratches the back of his head in embarrassment.

"R-right, can't say."

Kyle turns ahead once more and the two continue on taking a right turn, then a left, and heading down a narrow hallway away from the other guards and inmates who were walking toward the front exit.

They enter a large area with hundreds of other empty cells, where the guards on duty are also escorting them out of the back exit and kyle with Jaune trailing behind closely join the march.

"H-hey, is that?"

A hushed whisper takes Jaune's attention and he looks over to see two inmates being led pointing at him and gossiping like school girls as they talked amongst themselves.

"I think it is."

The two stare at him for a brief moment as if trying to confirm his identity before the one on the left taps another inmate and whispers in his ear before pointing at Jaune. As the third guy's eyes widen the other inmate started spreading it around, catching more and more people's attention until eventually, the entire march was taking peeks at Jaune who was trying his best to keep his head down as a pit formed in his stomach.

Kyle, took note of this and even saw the original one who spread this fact tell a guard who turned his head briefly before sneering and speeding up slightly but again, did nothing.

Jaune, on the other hand, was having a mini panic attack, his heart was thumping out of his chest, his palms were sweaty, his armpits were itchy and his head was throbbing.

All this attention was giving him flashbacks and he didn't like it, not one bit. All those judgmental and hateful stares reminded him of his trial and of his last conversation with his dad.

~~~

"D-dad? What are you saying?"

Jaune stuttered into the phone as he stared wide-eyed at the scarily similar man who sat across from him, the two separated by a thin glass pane.

His world was crumbling down once again.

The man in question looked a Jaune without emotion and repeated his previous statement without so much as a change in pitch or expression.

"I have removed your name from all official records in our name, and blacklisted you from all businesses that are open now and will be open in the future."

Jaune was at a loss for words. The recent news that he "Killed" the councilwoman was spread out across all 4 great continents, at this point you would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't know about it.

The world was against him, so why couldn't his own flesh and blood take his side?

"You are no longer an Arc. You are now just Jaune, a convicted criminal."

The words his dad just said repeated in his head and over again as if on an infinite loop.

Why did this have to happen to him?

"W-wait please just listen to me dad-"

The man cut him off before he could finish with the same emotionless tone as before.

"I am no longer your dad, and I am no longer your family, so you are no longer my responsibility."

No, this couldn't be happening. It couldn't!

"This is the last conversation we will ever have."

He wouldn't do this right? His dad? His pop? His hero?

"You will be locked up for the rest of your life and I hope it stays that way."

No.

The man got up to leave.

"Goodbye Jaune."

NO!

The sound of a scroll ringing alerts the two as Jaune jumps ever so slightly knocked out of his trance and Kyle simply takes his military-grade communication device out of his pocket.

"Yes sir?" Kyle answers.

[We have had a change of plans. Jaune has been marked for the furnace.]

Kyle looks over his shoulder to see Jaune shuffling there awkwardly, and still trying to keep his head down as they neared the back of the march.

"I see." Kyle responds simply and puts away his scroll.

That's when an inmate screams clearly out of his mind and charges at Jaune in a frenzy. Jaune not expecting to be attacked like this was tackled to the ground by the inmate and he could do nothing as his arms were pinned to the ground and the inmate just started wailing on him.

Blow after blow.

Punch after punch.

A knocked-out tooth here, a broken nose there.

The aura-canceling implants made sure that the inmate's fists were doing as much damage as possible and there was no chance of help as the others around looked at him with venomous contempt, ignored him completely, or cheered on the inmate.

Kyle looked on at the scene passively.

He knew why the inmate was attacking Jaune, hell, everyone knows why.

Perhaps it was for the best that he was being sent to the furnace, it would be a better alternative to living like this. If you could even call being the most hated person on the planet living.

Kyle didn't know, he wasn't in Jaune's shoes. He thought about thinking about it, but it wasn't his job to know, so ultimately he decided, he didn't care.

He just knocked out the inmate that was trying to strangle Jaune and then dragged the blond's unconscious body away from the scene toward another exit as he heard resounding boos from both inmates and guards alike.

~~~

{Uptown vale}

There was a large stage that held the city of vale from a high view as the background with a large brown desk in the right corner and a velvet couch in the left. The film crew was nearly finished setting up for the show, the cameras were set to record, the mics were all in place, the lighting was near perfect and the assistant just finished putting the last touch-ups on the show host.

"Is that the last of it?"

The host, a young woman named opal, asked as an intern handed her the script for today's show as her assistant grabbed all her supplies from the desk and exited the stage with an unnoticeable blush on her face.

The intern, a hormonal teenage boy who was standing nervously in front of what he and thousands of other boys consider the most beautiful woman in remnant, nods very quickly trying his best to seem professional.

"Y-yes ma'am! That's all 15-- I mean 14 p-pages!"

Opal gives the book a once over, looking at each page for a split second while her eyes haze over before turning to the next and doing the same before she has memorized the entire book.

The young boy marvels at the sight of the Opal. At both her signature ability that made her the Go-To for most talk shows and visual entertainment in general, and her simply stunning face that has left nearly all of vale's boys hard at one point or the other.

It was a well know fact that Opal Polopal was the best actor in the world. Not the best female actor, not the best voice actor, but the very best actor in the world period.

Her emulation of emotion was immaculate and unsurpassed, her vocal range could put opera singers to shame, and her ability to memorize scripts made sure most takes only went through once saving hours and hours of both time and money.

But most of all she was the most beautiful woman in the world, it was an objective fact, not an opinion, but a fact voiced by all 4 kingdoms after an international vote was created to find the prettiest male and female models of all time.

She won by a fucking landslide over the other contestants.

A 93.5% vote margin.

If you wanted a high-quality production made in a short amount of time, then you needed to hire her. This was the consensus made by most of the major directors and writers.

And she knew it too.

She knew she was the best, she saw the results of the vote, she watched the tangents about her from news outlets, she listen to the diss tracks of jealous bitches who would never be better than her, she saw the various forums centered around her whether it be of her face, her chest, her bottom, or her feet of all things she saw it.

So when she saw yet another young man turned on by her mere presence what else could she do but smirk internally and give the young man the best gift he would receive in his worthless life?

"Thank you." She said as she handed him back the folder.

It was two simple words and a smile to boot, but Opal Polopal could tell that the man was struggling to respond or even, stay standing by notice of his quivering knees.

He was no doubt going to brag to his other pimple-ridden basement dwellers about this, that THE opal just thanked him, but all the better, right? He just got what others could only dream of, he can die happily, and now her manager can hope off of her dick about being nice to the lesser folk.

It was a win-win.

"Everyone except for Opal off the set we are live in 15!" The director for her very own show announced to the entire crew.

The young man blushed something fierce and basically ran away from her covering his privates with the folder, though the wet spot where his fly would be didn't escape Opal's eyes, and her smirk only got bigger from it.

The cameraman held up his hand and started mouthing out the countdown.

5

4

3

2

1

Live!

Opal cleared her throat and looked at the camera with a smile that captivated thousands before and will continue to do so for a long time.

"Hello, city! My name is Opal and I am your host for today's episode of V'Real-Time!"